Brown Eyes broke. ‘Yvette … Yvette, she met me on the road just above the river and she stopped me. I was only going to watch. I wasn’t going to say anything!’
‘Yes, yes. Now calm down and let me have the rest of it.’
‘She … she has said I was to mind my own business, that I was trespassing on the Domaine Thériault. Me who has always gone there to swim! And now she’s dead! Murdered!’
Kohler held the girl by the shoulders and tried to comfort her. He knew he was all clumsiness at this sort of thing.
‘What else did she say? Hey, come on now. I’m not going to hurt you. Me, I was just kidding about the graves.’
The kid sniffed in. ‘That … that the general, he was a very powerful man and that he’d … he’d send me to Germany as forced labour if I didn’t do as she said. Me, I was to keep my mouth shut and I have, monsieur. I have! Until this day.’
There was more blubbering, more shaking, the face buried in the hands and the forehead pressed against him with the other girl looking on like death.
Kohler dragged out his handkerchief. ‘Blow,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s clean, even if it is German. Dry your eyes.’
The girl did as she was told. ‘Thanks … thanks. That is very kind of you, monsieur.’ Kind of the Gestapo!
‘So, okay, now listen, eh? Can you remember anything else about that evening?’
The girl sucked in a ragged breath and shook her head.
‘Think hard.’
‘No, nothing, monsieur. I swear it. I …’
‘Well?’
‘Me, I have passed one of the brothers on the way home. He … he was heading for the river and in a great hurry. He didn’t look up at me.’
A coldness came to Kohler. ‘Which of the brothers?’
‘Michael … the one who makes the wine.’
So Brother Michael had gone after Jérome as had Yvette. ‘Were they lovers?’ he asked. God help him. ‘The general and Jérome?’
The girls stiffened in alarm. Lovers …? Jérome who had such a slender body? Jérome who swam in the nude and brushed the water from his body while standing in the shallows.
Neither of them could take their eyes from the graves. Lovers … Jérome who would lie naked on the sand …
The one called Brigitte hastily crossed herself and whispered, ‘Perhaps.’
Brown Eyes emptily said, ‘It can’t be so.’
*
Ackermann’s entry into the church fulfilled a detective’s dream. Miraculously three places were made for him and his associates at the front, next to the aisle, the abbot and the brothers shifting over.
In one glance from the balcony St-Cyr could sweep the lot of them into focus, both the dead and the living. Ah, Mon Dieu, to have the camera rolling at such a moment. It was almost too good to be true.
But why had Ackermann done it? To allay suspicion? To cover up? Or out of courtesy to a distant cousin?
His presence could only tar the countess with the label of a collaborator. Had that been what he’d had in mind? It was a thought St-Cyr was certain he shared with the countess.
The eulogy droned up to him. Two young people taken in the flower of life. A brother and his sister, et cetera, et cetera.
St-Cyr shut the priest out and concentrated on the mourners. The abbot was nervous – understandably so. To sit next to the SS, to have had to move aside for them, could not have been easy. But had Ackermann wanted to warn him? Was that it?
Brother Michael was telling his rosary. The beads trickled through the workworn fingers. The sad grey eyes, now granite hard, searched the new flowers and the wreaths for answers as he grimly moved his lips.
The beekeeper’s head was bowed – real grief there, was that it? Had the beekeeper made advances to Brother Jérome and been rejected? Had he then killed Jérome in a fit of rejection and somehow moved the body to Fontainebleau Woods? And the bicycle … one mustn’t forget Brother Michael’s bicycle. And one mustn’t forget that the abbey possessed a gasogene and made regular deliveries to Paris. Ah yes.
But, had Ackermann and Jérome been lovers? To be a homosexual in the SS was to ask for death yet the general looked as cold as steel. Was it Poland all over again and 50 millimetre cannon at a stone’s throw or the flame throwers?
Ackermann’s gaze never wavered. Not a muscle moved. Perhaps he was used to ceremonies. Perhaps he was here simply to make an arrest for the Sicherheitsdienst and to fight a duel.
The scar tissue glistened.
13 July/42 – Fontainebleau Woods, the pond. Spent the afternoon sunbathing. Went swimming twice. Drank champagne. After the chase, there is resignation and acceptance.
22 November/42 – Arrived at the Gorge of the Archers and took the footpath up into the woods. Waited from 2.30 p.m. until 3.30 p.m. Sat in the car and talked until 5.10 p.m., after which, drove back to Paris.
Sat in the car and talked … Whose car? Mademoiselle Arcuri’s?
Waited from 2.30 p.m. until 3.30 p.m.… Had the person being met – Ackermann, presumably – not shown up? Had Jérome then gone back to the car and talked with its driver for nearly two hours?
Had that driver been Gabrielle Arcuri or the countess? Had the diary even been written by Yvette?
Or had the driver been Ackermann and they’d simply waited an hour before settling down to business?
They had braided the girl’s hair and had pinned the braids across the top of her brow. It was very French, very of the countryside.
7 November/42 – The Ritz again. From 9.00 p.m. until after curfew. Was driven back to the flat on the rue Daguerre. The Corsicans’ aunt.
Yvette could not possibly have followed her brother to all of those places. Only one conclusion could be drawn. He’d told her of them and she’d written them down. If she’d written the diary at all.
Or had he told them to Mademoiselle Arcuri, who had then recorded them?
After the chase, there is resignation and acceptance …
A boulder and a bullet – two vastly different killings, both linked by more than blood.
A virgin … Three stiff shots of plum brandy in her stomach when she died. ‘Tell Mademoiselle Arcuri it’s all going to be fixed.’
Ackermann had developed a nervous twitch in the left side of his face. From time to time he touched the cheek and cursed whoever had been responsible for the burns.
He’d kill Hermann. He wouldn’t miss. They’d use the gardens inside the walls of the château and the general would choose the time.
Did you fall in love with that boy? asked St-Cyr. Did you caress his young body to forget the pain of your disfigurement? Was it you who bit his thigh or one of the countess’s dogs?
Ah yes, one of the greyhounds could well have done such a thing in play. Jérome would have known them well.
A key … there had to be a key. Something they’d overlooked. The Russian angle, was it really deep enough to drive Ackermann to look into Gabrielle Arcuri’s past? After all, he was working with the Sicherheitsdienst. Oberg could have assigned him her file. Jérome could simply have been the inside source. Hence, After the chase, there is resignation and acceptance, but why tell Yvette of it, why tell one who was obviously so loyal to her mistress?
Or had she been? What of the condoms in their little silk sleeves? What of the cigarette case, the purse itself, and the diamonds?
Had the ‘theft’ of the purse simply been a lie, tearful though it was? Had its contents been planted by Yvette to hide the truth of the killing and throw suspicion on to her mistress?
Were the condoms there to signify Natasha Kulakov Myshkin’s brief past as a young girl of the streets or were they but the precaution of a married woman in a time of war?
A woman whose husband wasn’t dead.
And the diamonds, Mademoiselle Arcuri? he asked, studying the veiled mirage with an intensity that frightened him. Death … death was down there in more than two places. He saw her naked, shorn of her hair and lying beside the river, saw the
blood draining from the gash in her throat. The Resistance.
The diamonds … were they to pay someone for their silence, Mademoiselle Arcuri? Jérome perhaps, or were they the result of his blackmailing the SS General Hans Gerhardt Ackermann?
Would Ackermann have even stood for such a thing, no matter how much he’d been in love with the boy? No, of course not. He’d have killed Jérome if someone else hadn’t done it first, and then he’d have killed Yvette. He’d kill the chanteuse too. He’d try to put the blame on the Resistance and he’d put a stop to everything. He’d even come to witness the burials.
René Yvon-Paul hesitantly took his mother’s hand in his. She squeezed the boy’s fingers. It could mean nothing more than the touching bond between a mother and her son.
Or it could be that the boy knew full well she was desperately afraid and badly in need of reassurance.
At a word from the priest, the mourners rose and began to file past the caskets.
Kohler opened the door of the shed behind the church to find two men sitting on the floor, leaning back against a wall and having a bite to eat. As gravediggers went, they were a pair of princes. The ox-eyed one with the walrus moustache and the little black bow tie was bursting the buttons of his vest and the seams of the stovepipe suit he wore; the weasel, a tough, belligerent little bastard, looked as if he was waiting to rob the dead. All nose, thin, tight lips, a parsimonious moustache and eyes that were as hard and dark as anthracite.
Being their guest, Kohler magnanimously offered cigarettes and intro’s but declined to share their much-swigged bottle of wine, even if it was from Vouvray. ‘It’s too hard on my stomach,’ he quipped. ‘Gives me gas – any wine, you understand. German, French, Italian, it’s all the same. Pickle juice.’
They nodded with disinterest and kept their thoughts to themselves. Gas, eh? Bavarian farts! Too much good French cabbage and black market olive oil in the diet!
The whores, thought the weasel. Little French girls under the age of sixteen. Dolls in their underwear. They’re what’s given Big-foot the wind. Wine … since when did wine bother anybody?
The weasel dragged out his handkerchief and in the process scattered the more than two precious handfuls of funeral-parlour oats he’d stolen from the horses. In dismay he searched the floor for mice to gobble it up.
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Kohler blithely. ‘I think I’ve got just the thing.’
He went out to the hearses, not to get one of the nags, though he would have liked to do so, but to strip the feedbags from two of them and fill the weasel’s pockets again.
‘So, my friends, a few questions, eh? While the dead give up the last of their prayers.’
The weasel had by then, on the insistence of his partner, swept up the offending oats and hidden them away. He now filled a small sack, taking equal amounts from both feedbags. ‘Questions …? Is it that you are from the police, monsieur?’
‘The Gestapo,’ said Kohler quietly, as the grains fell from that thieving hand.
‘Gestapo?’ asked the walrus, swallowing tightly. ‘But I thought you said you were from Paris, from one of the newspapers? Le Matin …?’
‘Gestapo,’ said Kohler. ‘It’s a murder case, isn’t it?’
‘But… but the SS, they are inside the church?’ bleated the walrus.
‘Oh them,’ said Kohler. ‘They’re just friends of the family.’
‘Friends … but that is not possible, monsieur. Riel Noel knows no one in the SS.’
The man was a real klutz.
‘The countess does,’ spat the weasel acidly. ‘She’s asked that cousin of hers for help. That’s why he’s here. To teach the Reverend Father some manners.’
‘Over the land claim,’ offered the walrus apologetically. They’d best keep talking a little. This one had to stoop to avoid banging his head on the roof. He’d not stay long.
‘The land claim?’ asked Kohler.
The walrus went on. ‘Yes. The upper vineyard of the Domaine Thériault has always been a private passion of the Reverend Father. The deeds, they are not entirely correct, you understand. Written by monks who knew nothing of surveying, and by magistrates in Paris or Rome who liked to write in Latin but had never visited this area. The matter has been in and out of the courts for centuries.’
‘That’s why the abbot accepted Jérome Noel into the order – to gain favour with the countess,’ said the weasel.
‘It didn’t work,’ added the walrus. ‘Now our parish priest, the Father Eugene, has the body and the abbot and the countess continue their fight. It’s always the same with these powerful people. One gains a little by trickery, then the other gains something back. They go at it like cats in the night, monsieur. Most of the action is in the howling.’
Kohler knew he’d have to remember that one.
The weasel grinned. The Gestapo was loosening up. Good … good … that was very good. Big-foot liked these little stories … ‘Our parish priest was chosen by the countess from among the fifteen candidates she and the abbot interviewed. Even Rome will fart for a countess.’
‘Any ideas who killed the brother and sister?’
The weasel shrugged. ‘The Préfet thinks it is the work of a sadist, monsieur, but then he is only the Préfet of Vouvray and the murders, they were not committed in his district. Talbotte, the Préfet of Greater Paris, has telephoned to give him the facts, you understand. The girl Yvette was raped in the you-know-where, but they’re not saying. They’re hushing it all up to preserve the sanctity of our minds.’
‘The brother, God forbid,’ offered the walrus, trying to help but not quite making it.
‘The brother, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘Flying up her backside after death! You two are under arrest for withholding information.’
‘Under arrest …? But … Ah no, monsieur,’ struggled the walrus, ‘you would not do that to us.’
Kohler yanked out his pistol. ‘I would and have. Stick up your hands. We’ll use the two graves you’ve already dug. They can dump the coffins in on top of you.’
Both armpits of the walrus’s jacket had split long ago. The poor bastard wet himself. In the name of Jesus, was his bladder that weak?
‘The countess’s car was seen leaving the area late on the night before Jérome’s body was found,’ blurted the man.
Now that was better. ‘Up by the monastery?’ demanded Kohler, cocking the pistol.
Dear Jesus, he means it! ‘There was a bicycle tied to the back of the car,’ managed the weasel, his eyes never leaving the muzzle of the gun. Gaston would be the first to get it.
‘Who was driving?’
The walrus coughed up. ‘The countess, who else? Me, I did not see so clearly, monsieur. Please, you must believe this. The rabbits are best in among the rocks, isn’t that so? Me, I was out …’
‘Trapping?’
Ah Mon Dieu! why had he said it? Now the forced labour for hunting and taking the spoils of the victors! ‘A few rabbits,’ he grimaced and tried to gesture with his arms up like that. ‘Only a few, monsieur.’
‘Three?’ demanded Kohler not letting up on the heat. Four?… Six? Gott in Himmel, six furry little bundles or was it …?’
Ten years – he’d get at least ten years! The walrus’s eyes melted. Thank God there was no more in his bladder. ‘Eight, monsieur. I … I have the ferret and the nets. My wife, she makes the pâté for the butcher. I could let you have two pots …?’ It was a hope, a gamble, a possibility …
‘Six,’ said Kohler. ‘I’ll want the address later. You two keep co-operating and I’ll be sure to tell her what happened to you. Did anyone else see the car?’
The two of them glanced apprehensively at each other. Again the walrus had the tongue. ‘No … No, there was no one else.’
Kohler stepped forward and came to crouch between the man’s outspread boots. The stench of urine was overpowering yet he reached out to straighten the man’s tie. ‘We like to have our people looking their best,’ he said softly. The
gun tapped the walrus under the chin. ‘You’re lying,’ said Kohler. ‘It’s a shame you’re so big in the belly. It’ll make the coffin on top of you tilt.’
God forgive him, he’d have to tell the truth! ‘The … the abbot or … or one of the brothers, monsieur. He … he was standing on the road, watching as the car drove away.’
Oh, was he now? The tears were very real. ‘And was Yvette at home having her backside reamed or in Paris?’
The walrus winced. The weasel came to the rescue. ‘Yvette was at home visiting her parents.’
So he’d found his voice again, had he? ‘And did she know how to drive a car?’ asked Kohler.
The weasel didn’t like the look in the Gestapo’s eyes. ‘Madame Thériault has taught her this some years ago. When … when Yvette was eighteen, I think.’
‘Gabrielle …’ offered the walrus. ‘In the name of Jesus, monsieur, could we not lower our arms?’
‘Jesus isn’t with us, so I can’t ask him,’ said Kohler. The oxeyes swam as they fled. ‘No … no, please, I insist,’ breathed Kohler. ‘You must look at me. It’s one of our very first rules when dealing with shits like you two. Hey, tell me, my friend, are the bowels okay – the back ones? You’re not about to empty them or choke on them?’
The man nodded quickly. To be humiliated like this … ‘I was in the last war, monsieur, at Verdun. Ever since, my system it has not functioned so well in times of crisis.’
‘An old soldier, eh? Hey, listen, I know all about it. So, okay, I’ll let up a little if you’ll tell me – was Gabrielle Arcuri also at home, visiting the countess and her son?’
‘The son is dead, monsieur. Monsieur Charles, he was killed at Sedan during the invasion.’
Kohler let that one pass. ‘Gabrielle’s son, René Yvon-Paul.’
‘Oh, him. Yes … yes, me, I suppose she did come to see the boy. She often does.’
‘But you don’t know for sure she was here?’
‘No … no, I cannot say that.’
Kohler stood up. The weasel, like all of his kind, had let the walrus blurt it out and take the rap.
He waved the gun at the man to indicate that the arms must remain aloft. ‘Was the General Ackermann at the château?’
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